held to be obstacles to his political plans, he was at the same time
seeking in every way the means of restraining a haughty aristocracy,
always under arms, whose systematic want of discipline was a danger
both to the throne and to the country. As soon as he had obtained
from the representatives of the nation, assembled together in
States-General, the right to impose taxes according to the requirements
of the sovereign, he set to work on the definitive organization of a
permanent paid army (Fig. 44). He fixed the age of military service at
eighteen, and decreed that none of his subjects, except the old and
the sick, should be exempt from it, unless they paid a certain sum to
the royal treasury, and supplied, according to their rank and means,
one or more substitutes (decree of 1302, 1303, 1306) to serve under
the flag of the _ost_ of the king (Fig. 46). Till that time,
military service had only been obligatory for forty consecutive days,
or, at the most, for three months. This service was, indeed, often of
less duration, according to the different degree of infeudation of any
particular fief, and was hedged about, besides, with so many privileges
and with so many exemptions, that if a feudal army did not succeed in
bringing a short campaign to a prosperous issue, it generally met with
a fatal collapse. In accordance with this design, Philippe le Bel, at
the opening of the Flemish campaign, summoned “for four months to his
standards, archbishops, bishops, abbots, dukes, counts, barons, and
other nobles, all liable to the ban,” each of whom could claim pay at
the rate of twelve deniers (about four francs) a day, besides a sum of
thirty sous (about thirty francs) for their equipment.
Philippe le Long (1314) and Philippe de Valois 1337–1340) continued and
improved the work of Philippe le Bel. Thenceforward, the _ost_ or
army of the king was regularly established; the cross-bowmen and the
men-at-arms were the first corps who received a permanent organization
and a fixed rate of pay.
[Illustration: Fig. 46.--Messenger bringing a Letter to the
King’s Army.--From a Manuscript in the National Library of Paris
(Thirteenth Century).]
In the fourteenth century, the French infantry, composed merely of
more or less badly-armed archers, inspired its leaders with no great
confidence. Its want of skill and its cowardice too often compromised
the issue of an engagement. It was necessary, in order to support
those combatants always ready to take to flight, to employ foreign
mercenaries, English, Italian, or German, who fought well when they
were liberally paid. These mercenaries, more practised in war and
more courageous than the soldiers of the ban, were entrusted with the
management of the cannon, which at this time were first employed, and
which were carried by the camp followers. We may here repeat what we
have spoken of elsewhere, viz., that the imperfections of the earliest
cannons, the difficulty which attended their use, and the danger
incurred by those who discharged them, caused the old arms to be long
preferred to these new ones. In fact, long after the new artillery
had made considerable progress, it was employed simultaneously with
the ancient style of projectiles. The long period during which this
important transition in projectile weapons was slowly taking place,
was one of the most wretched in the annals of military art. All the
great battles of the fourteenth century present us with striking
examples of an entire absence of skill in tactics. Mons-en-Puelle
(1304), where King Philippe le Bel was all but surprised in his camp;
Cassel (1328), where Philippe de Valois escaped half naked from his
enemies’ hands; Crecy (1346), where the English used cannon for the
first time; Poitiers (1356), where King John was taken prisoner on
the battle-field; Nicopolis (1393), where knighthood covered itself
with disgrace; Agincourt, where the flower of the French nobility
perished--are all examples of the most shameful confusion during the
struggle, of the most disgraceful butchery after the defeat. It is not
too much to say, that during the whole of this long epoch of bloody
contests, true knights and staunch soldiers were very rare, and that
good leaders were even rarer still.
In Italy, the _condottieri_, whose principal commander was
the Englishman, John Hawkwood, and in France, the free companies,
commanded by the renowned Armand de Cervoles, and even those bands of
_routiers_, _Brabançons_, and _tard-venus_, who pillaged
and plundered the realm to such an extent, says an old chronicler,
“that not even a cock was heard to crow in it,” were the only troops
who showed any acquaintance with the resources of military warfare
or the slightest knowledge of strategic science. It was amongst the
ranks of these indefatigable soldiers that the celebrated Bertrand du
Guesclin made his first campaign (Fig. 47).
[Illustration: Fig. 47.--Battle of Auray (Sept. 29, 1364),
between John de Montfort and Charles de Blois, in which Bertrand
du Guesclin was made prisoner by Chandos.--Fac-simile of a
Woodcut in the “Chroniques de Bretagne,” by Alain Bouchard: 4to,
Galliot du Pré, 1514.]
The paid gendarmery, a mixture of heavy and light cavalry, committed,
in the reign of Charles VI., many breaches of discipline, without
atoning for them by lending any really efficacious aid to French
chivalry, which was almost entirely cut to pieces in the bloody
disaster of Agincourt (October 25th, 1415). Charles VII., replaced on
the throne of his ancestors by his nobles after he had driven out the
English, “by the help of God and Joan the Virgin,” determined therefore
to disband the gendarmery. From the picked men of the body he formed
the framework of fifteen new companies of artillery, numbering nine
thousand combatants, amongst whom were incorporated all the regular
cavalry of the kingdom. Each gendarme, thoroughly equipped, was
attended by two archers and two followers on horseback; this group of
five mounted men was called _a lance fully equipped_. In 1447, a
sixth man and horse were added to it. A little later, Charles VII.
raised several paid bands, recruited by voluntary enlistment and
commanded by responsible captains, who were paid by the war treasurers,
according to the number of men on the monthly muster-roll. This
creation of mercenary troops diminished still further the importance
of the ban, which was no longer anything but a badly-equipped secondary
militia, though still armed with bows and pikes, and still obliged
to wear a uniform. On the actual field of battle the pikemen were
always posted in the van; behind them came the foot archers, wearing
_salades_, or helmets without vizors, the brigandine or short coat
of mail, and armed with cross-bows. But this reorganization of the
troops had no invigorating effect on the infantry of the communes, and
the _franc-archer_ remained the type of the cowardly soldier.
[Illustration: Fig. 48.--Great Seal of Charles the Bold, Duke of
Burgundy. The Legend, in Latin, enumerates his titles and feudal
possessions.--National Archives of France (Fifteenth Century).]
The death of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, slain in the battle
of Nancy (1477), completed the downfall of the feudal chivalry, whose
last and most martial representative he was (Fig. 48). Louis XI., who
had gathered around him a devoted army, composed of mercenaries from
all countries, and who could entirely rely upon the fidelity of his
Scottish guard, began attacking the great fiefs, which were in reality
the rivals of his throne, and succeeded in destroying them, having no
further need of them and their haughty vassalage. Little by little
the seigniorial standards disappeared, and their war-cries ceased
to resound; a _fief held under the obligation to carry arms_ no
longer forced the vassal, its occupier, under the pain of felony and
bodily _confiscation_, to equip and arm himself at the first
appeal of his suzerain, and to follow the royal _ost_ with a
definite number of fighting men. The principle of purchasing exemption
from military service being henceforward admitted, all, whether nobles
or villains, were at liberty either to serve or to purchase their
exemption. Some few feudal _gendarmes_ still remained, but most
were free. Of the _squires-at-arms_, some were feudal, others
free or even plain _varlets_. Canons, abbots, and prelates whom
feudal laws had forced to contribute their personal military service,
had long since found substitutes in the persons of the attorneys or
bailiffs, who superintended the _ban_ and _arrière-ban_ of
the land-owning nobles. Some of the clergy, however, preferred to
be individually present with the armies of their sovereign; many a
prelate or abbot was delighted to add to his coat-of-arms a cuirass,
a sword, a helmet, or some other warlike emblem. In 1356, the bishops
of Châlons, of Sens, and of Melun distinguished themselves by feats of
personal bravery at the bloody engagement of Poitiers; in 1359, the
Bishop of Rheims, by a few vigorous sorties, was the means of saving
that city when the English were besieging it; the Archbishop of Sens,
William of Montaigu, fell sword in hand on the field of Agincourt;
in 1455, a simple monk successfully defended Belgrade; while at the
siege of Plaisance, Philip of Savoy, Bishop of Valence, was knighted
for his prowess in the breach itself. It is true that many of these
ecclesiastical dignitaries had never been solemnly invested; but
the example they followed was a lofty one, for several popes, John
X., Leo IX., Urban II., Innocent II., and Julius II. (who had first
distinguished himself as an able leader under the name of Julien de la
Rovère) had personally commanded the troops of the Holy See.
The _fire-stick_, that is to say the arquebuse, which was then
called _hequebutte_, with difficulty took the place of the bow,
and with still greater difficulty that of the cross-bow. In 1481,
Louis XI. deprived his sergeants-at-arms of both the latter weapons,
not to arm them with fire-sticks, but in order to give them the pike,
the halbert, and the broadsword, of which the Swiss in the recent wars
had made such formidable use. Louis XI., however, increased the number
of his mounted archers, and placed them later under the orders of
the colonel of a company of free-lances known as Albanais or Scouts.
These combined bodies formed the French national light cavalry till
Francis I. replaced them by the light horse, a body chiefly composed of
mercenaries of different nations. In England, ever since the thirteenth
century, the mounted archers formed a considerable portion of the
national forces. An army of fifteen hundred _complete lances_,
which represented a total of six or seven thousand horsemen, required
a complement of at least five thousand mounted archers, who were all
skilful marksmen. In the time of Henry VIII., an English bowman could
discharge as many as twelve arrows in a minute, and he would have
considered himself disgraced if he had let fly a single shaft which
failed to kill, wound, or at least strike an enemy.
[Illustration: Fig. 49.--German Foot-soldiers fighting.--From a
Drawing by Holbein preserved in the Museum at Basle (Sixteenth
Century).]
[Illustration: Fig. 50.--Italian Warriors of the Fifteenth
Century.--From a Bas-relief on the Triumphal Arch of Castel
Nuovo, Naples, erected in 1470 by Ferdinand of Aragon, to
celebrate his Victories over John of Calabria, Son of René
d’Anjou.]
The desperate mêlée of Fornoue (July 6th, 1495), which forced Charles
VIII. to retrace his steps after his successful Italian expedition,
was nearly the last of the confused and sanguinary struggles of the
Middle Ages. The sword and the bow contributed more than the cannon and
the fire-stick to the terrible result of the day. From that time the
infantry regained its old pre-eminence over the cavalry, and cannon
were employed preferably to all other projectile weapons. A complete
revolution was also about to ensue, as well in the tactics of an army
in the field as in the attack and defence of fortresses. Louis XII.
and Francis I., in their Italian campaigns, in which, they wasted so
much of the resources and treasures of France, had to contend with
German and Spanish mercenaries, at that time the best soldiers in the
world; they opposed to them bodies of foreign infantry, sometimes
lansquenets (Fig. 49), sometimes Swiss, who made a trade of war, and
who, to earn their pay, did not hesitate to fight against their own
countrymen. There was one drawback, however, to the acceptance of their
services, and that was that they frequently changed sides on the eve of
an engagement, or refused to fight on the slightest pretext. More than
once the knights of France saw themselves suddenly abandoned by the
infantry whose duty it was to support them, and who allowed them to be
cut to pieces before their eyes without stirring to assist them (Fig.
50). This happened at the fatal battle of Pavia, when the king and his
nobles struggled on foot in hand-to-hand desperation till they fell or
were taken prisoners.
In the ordinary arrangement, at this period, of any army giving battle
in the open field, the free archers, the men-at-arms, and the knights
were posted either in the centre or at the wings, while the infantry,
properly so called, divided into little groups of five, termed
_cinquains_, was either thrown forward to skirmish, or sent behind
to cover the rearguard, or detached at intervals on the flanks in order
to harass the enemy and to protect the baggage. During the engagement,
all the knights, clad entirely in armour, dismounted in order to fight,
and left their horses to the care of the infantry. In these days horses
were only used to carry their riders on the march, which the weight of
their armour would not have allowed them to perform on foot.
A horseman, when disabled by long service or by age, was no longer
employed in the cavalry, but retired into the infantry, where he
enjoyed, under the title of _anspessade_ (from the Italian
_spezzate_, broken), the privileges that were at a later period
granted to veterans.
No troops, until the time of the Crusades, had any distinguishing mark
among themselves, except the difference of their arms, and the idea of
a military uniform had not then arisen. But with the emblazoned arms,
the standards, and the pennants, there came into use scarves, worn as
baldricks or sashes, over the cuirass, and of which the colour, which
generally matched that of the standard of the feudal seignior of the
wearer, became as much a rallying signal as the standards themselves
(Fig. 51). The necessity of distinguishing friends from foes at a
distance naturally also brought about more or less marked distinctions
of dress.
[Illustration: Fig. 51.--Representations of the Banner of St.
Denis: No. 1, the oldest, is from a window in the Cathedral of
Chartres; No. 3, the latest, is from a Manuscript of Froissart,
No. 2644, in the National Library (the original which it
represents was carried at the defeat of Artevelde at Rosebecque);
No. 2, Drawing from the Library of the Célestins, preserved by
Montfaucon.--From “Paris and its Historians,” by MM. Leroux de
Lincy and L. Tisserand.]
The administration and inner regulation of an army, which had been
one of the principal cares of the Gothic and earlier Frankish kings,
were entirely neglected, like everything pertaining to the art of war,
for many centuries. For instance, at the beginning of the fourteenth
century, the captains of the different companies were allowed to
distribute the pay to their men as they pleased after each muster,
and were solely and entirely entrusted with the administration of
their companies. They were thus entirely irresponsible, and did
not concern themselves to see that the regulations, prescribed by
superior authority, concerning the general discipline of the army,
were carried into effect. In 1355, daring the captivity of King John
in England, special commissioners were appointed, with the title of
controllers, whose duty it was to superintend the internal economy of
the army generally, with a view to put a stop to the numerous abuses
that existed; but the disturbed and unfortunate period at which this
attempt was made rendered it almost necessarily a barren one. When the
dauphin came to the throne as Charles V., he returned to this project,
which he had indeed himself originated, but at his death anarchy again
reigned for more than a century. Civil and foreign wars laid waste and
exhausted France, without bringing to the surface one single creative
mind, with the exception perhaps of Jean Bureau, the grand master of
artillery under Charles VIII. It is by no means going beyond the mark
to state that the reverses sustained in Italy, in the reigns of Charles
VIII. and Louis XII., were owing less to the chivalrous recklessness
of the nobility and their ignorance of the first principles of
warfare, than to the gross faults of the military administration of
the country. Even in Francis I.’s time, the public service was in such
a miserable condition that he was never really properly informed of
the actual effective strength of his army, for his captains, whose
interest it was to exaggerate the number of the rank and file under
their standards (Figs. 52 and 53), habitually deceived the generals and
their superiors. To such a degree was this carried that, on the eve of
the battle of Pavia, Francis I. was led to believe that his army was
a third stronger than it really was. At last, however, in 1517, there
issued from this chaotic confusion the first germ of a proper system of
supervision and control of all matters relating to war.
[Illustration:
Fig. 52.--Knight in complete Armour.
Fig. 53.--Arquebusier of the Sixteenth Century.
After Cesare Vecellio, “Degli Habiti Antichi e Moderni:” 8vo,
1590.]
If the tacticians of Italy were the first to fathom theoretically
the science of war, it was the Swiss, under Marshal Trivulce, the
Spaniards, under Gonzalvez of Cordova, and finally the Flemish, under
the Duke of Alba, who successfully restored the military combinations
of ancient Greece. They were the first to manœuvre in dense masses
and in battalions, and they were the first to successfully employ
the column formation of troops. The pikemen of France followed their
example, while the troops armed with projectile weapons fought as
skirmishers in the van, or in lines two or three deep. It was not,
however, till Henry IV.’s time that any considerable body of troops
was seen capable of advancing in close column without breaking its
formation, and it was not till Louis XIII.’s time that the regiment,
first introduced in the preceding reign, became a recognised permanent
military unit.
[Illustration: Fig. 54.--The Reapers of Death, an Allegory
of War, from an Engraving of Hans-Sebald Beham (Sixteenth
Century).--Collection of M. Ambroise Firmin-Didot.]
[Illustration: Fig. 55.--Battle of Dreux, December 19, 1562, won
by François de Guise over the Protestants. In the foreground is
Marshal Saint-André being shot by a soldier.--Fac-simile of an
Engraving of the period by Tortorel and Périssin (Collection of
M. Guénebaut).]
Towards the close of the fifteenth century the French native cavalry
still consisted entirely of heavy troopers. The Albanians, the
mercenaries of whom the French light cavalry were composed, sold their
services, _man and horse_, as the Swiss sold theirs, _man and
halbert_. Charles VIII. enrolled eight thousand Albanians for his
Italian expedition; but, fifty years later, this foreign element had
disappeared from the French army, which had by that time, in addition
to its heavy cavalry, a body of light cavalry of its own (Fig. 55).
Until the reign of Henry IV., who was the first monarch to dispense
with their dangerous and immoral assistance, free lances were
universally employed even by those sovereigns who had promulgated the
severest decrees against them, but who, for want of regular soldiers,
found themselves forced to accept their doubtful services. Brantôme
has thus portrayed them: “Vestus à la pendarde, un haut de chausses
bouffant; monstrant la jambe nue, une ou deux, portant leurs bas
déchaussés pendant à la ceinture; chantant en cheminant pour soulager
le travail de leur chemin.”[3] These scouts, who served on foot, were
only allowed _l’étape_--that is to say, a daily allowance of food
and forage; but they enjoyed in war time the right of pillage in all
towns and fortresses taken by assault (Fig. 56).
This system of paying auxiliary troops _à l’étape_ was first
adopted in France in the fourteenth century, and had continued in use
in a desultory manner till the reign of Henry II., under whose order a
ration scale was drawn up, as well as a scale of provisions, cartage,
and billeting due to the king’s troops from the churches, monasteries,
communes, nobles, and burgesses, through the possessions of which and
in whose neighbourhood their road lay.
The legal age at which the enlistment of soldiers could be made,
the manner in which it was effected, and the length of service,
varied considerably throughout the Middle Ages and the period of the
Renaissance. In Henry II.’s time it was a custom to hire the soldier
for three months; Henry IV. increased this period, but not without
difficulty, for, to quote, the words of Sully, “Our soldiers can now
only be enlisted by force, and can only be persuaded to march by the
use of the stick and the threat of the gibbet.” To this picture we
must add the significant fact that the system of drill was a very
insufficient one, and that it was by no means unusual to find soldiers,
whose stay with the standards was after all but a very temporary one,
entirely incapable of handling the arms they were entrusted with. The
urban militia were, however, far superior to these recruits, for, since
the reign of Charles V., it was customary to drill the citizen every
Sunday with pike, bow, and cross-bow, particularly in the frontier
towns. It is not till Coligny’s time, in the middle of the sixteenth
century, that traces can be found of any regulations imposing on
commanding officers the duties of teaching and drilling their soldiers.
[Illustration: Fig. 56.--Soldiers of the German Bands.--From an
Oil Painting by Joachim Bueckelaer (Frankfort, 1548–1596), in the
possession of M. Paul de Saint-Victor.]
We have attempted to outline the general military physiognomy of the
Middle Ages; we will now rapidly examine the weapons and warlike
engines that were invented for the attack and defence of fortified
places.
Until the invention of gunpowder, or rather till that of artillery
(Fig. 57) the whole art of fortification, says the learned Prosper
Mérimée, consisted in following more or less exactly the traditions
handed down by the Romans. The stronghold of the Middle Ages had
precisely the same characteristic as the ancient _castellum_. The
methods of attack against which the engineers had to guard were the
assault by escalade, either by surprise or by force of numbers, and
the breach, caused either by sapping, mining, or by the battering-rams
of the besiegers. The employment of machines or _engines_ of this
description was much less frequent after than before the fall of the
Roman empire, when the art of war knew no higher flight than to lay
siege to a place or sustain a siege.
[Illustration: Fig. 57.--Mortars on Movable Carriages.--From
an Engraving in the “Kriegsbuch” of Fronsperger: in folio,
Frankfort, 1575.]
The first operation of the besiegers was to destroy the outworks of the
besieged place, such as the posterns, the barbicans, the barriers, &c.
As most of these outworks were built of wood, attempts were generally
made to cut them to pieces with hatchets, or to set them on fire
with arrows to which were fastened pieces of burning tow steeped in
sulphur, or some other incendiary composition.
[Illustration: Fig. 58.--Caltrop, or Crow’s-foot (Fourteenth
Century).]
If the main body of the place were not so strongly fortified as to
render a successful assault by force impossible, it was usual to
attempt an escalade. With this end in view, the moat, which was
generally literally strewn with caltrops (Fig. 58), was filled up with
fascines, on which ladders were reared against the ramparts, while
archers on the brink of the ditch, protected by mantlets stuck in the
ground, drove away with their arrows any of the defenders who attempted
to show themselves above the parapets or at the loopholes.
[Illustration: Fig. 59.--Rolling Tower for scaling the Walls of
Towns.--Miniature from the “Histoire du Monde,” Manuscript of the
Fourteenth Century (Library of M. Ambroise Firmin-Didot).]